Mo Xiaoming had transmigrated. Not only that, he had changed sexes.
He had no idea why this had happened. Had he forgotten to drink Meng Po Soup, or had the god of transmigration played a harmless little joke on him?
When his piercing cries rang out once more, they marked the beginning of his second life. In his previous life, an out-of-control truck had sent him flying, bringing his young life to an abrupt end. This time, he would cherish every moment.
Unfortunately, he was no longer Mo Xiaoming, but Mo Caihuan.
Heavens, are you messing with me? Isn't this the world of A Record of a Mortal's Journey to Immortality? As she gradually learned about the Mo family's circumstances, despair set in. In this world, mortals were no more than ants. Once a cultivator unleashed their might, hundreds of millions of living beings could perish in an instant, all reduced to sacrifices for the cultivators.
She knew perfectly well that she had become the third young lady of the Mo Residence, and none of its three young ladies had spiritual roots. They were mortals through and through.
"Even a Pseudo-Spiritual Root would do." She could only appeal wordlessly to the heavens.
Without a spiritual root, cultivation was impossible.
"Body tempering? Spiritual energy is so scarce in the lower realms that I couldn't reach great mastery anyway. In an upper realm, a powerful body cultivator could wrestle with a Nascent Soul cultivator. But there's far too little spiritual energy down here." Mo Caihuan knew this other world was vast. The lower realms had thin spiritual energy and were the most numerous, like elementary schools.
The upper realms had abundant spiritual energy and were also fairly numerous, like middle schools.
The Immortal Domain regions of the Immortal Realm were numerous and vast, like high schools.
Finally, the three thousand Great Daos were like universities.
Elementary schools, middle schools, high schools, and universities together formed an immense world.
Right now, Mo Caihuan was in one particular elementary school-and an impoverished one at that, with pitifully little spiritual energy.
At least let me transmigrate to an upper realm. Even the Demon Realm would do. Swaddled in her blankets, Mo Caihuan felt only profound despair. Mortals truly had no right to survive.
In an upper realm, I could practice Body Tempering first, then find some way to implant a Demon Core or an artifact spiritual root. That could work. But the lower realms don't have techniques like that at all. It was like being unable to find a single middle-school textbook in an elementary school. Utterly hopeless.
In the end, she could only accept reality and start with martial arts. At least mortals could cultivate internal energy.
Unfortunately, internal energy could never compare to spiritual energy.
Spiritual energy existed throughout heaven and earth. Only those with spiritual roots could draw on that energy, absorb it into their bodies, and convert it into magical power. With magical power, they could conjure fire, manipulate metal... and do countless other things.
Internal energy could not do that. It could strengthen the body and increase physical power, but even a grandmaster of martial arts could not withstand a volley of crossbow bolts. A cultivator, on the other hand, could reduce an army to ashes with a flick of a finger. The difference was as vast as that between clouds and mud.
There was no helping it. Since she was a mortal, she would first do what a mortal could.
At three, Mo Caihuan began learning to read. At four, she read the martial arts manuals collected in the Mo Residence. At five, she developed internal energy. At six, she began practicing swordsmanship. At seven, she studied medical texts, and at eight, she saved someone for the first time.
At nine, she plagiarized novels and poetry to make money. At ten, she became embroiled in a battle for the first time and killed her first enemy.
At eleven, she paid a money-grubbing cultivator to check her family members for spiritual roots. None of them had any.
She had thought her transmigration might change the plot. Unfortunately, she was disappointed.
At twelve, she used the Mo Residence's Secret Helm to produce soap, perfume, glass, and other goods. At thirteen, she began funding scholars from poor families to take the imperial examinations, attempting to establish a foothold at the Imperial Court.
This year, she was fourteen and had blossomed into a graceful beauty who could shame the flowers and make the moon hide its face.
"My internal energy is already quite strong, but I still don't have a spiritual root." She stood in the courtyard, gazing speechlessly at the blue sky and white clouds, radiating a deep sense of helplessness.
By now, that father I got thrown in with should already be dead. She knew that her father, Mo Juren, had killed a cultivator, only to be cursed with premature aging. Though barely in his thirties, he had become as decrepit as a man of seventy or eighty.
That cultivator's Nascent Soul had taught him possession. All he needed was to find a body with spiritual roots, and he could switch bodies and even cultivate.
Unfortunately, the cultivator had not told Mo Juren that possession required a contest of strength between Nascent Souls. In the end, the disciple Mo Juren had raised with his own hands had killed him instead.
This is a cultivation world, so being male or female doesn't really matter. When cultivators possess someone, they only care about spiritual roots, not sex, she thought. But I wasn't possessed. I reincarnated. Possession has three great ironclad laws, and the first is that you can't possess a mortal without spiritual roots. Their body would explode.
The three great possession laws: first, one could not possess a mortal without spiritual roots, as a mortal's body was too weak to withstand a cultivator's Nascent Soul. Second, a stronger Nascent Soul had to possess a weaker one; the greater the disparity in strength, the higher the chance of success. Third, possession could only be performed once. A second attempt would destroy both soul and spirit, and was guaranteed to fail.
Mo Caihuan was a mortal, and Mo Xiaoming had not been a cultivator either, so this was not possession.
Possession, huh. It occurred to her that possession was another option, but where would she find someone with spiritual roots? It was not as though people had that written on their faces.
Mo Juren had only encountered Han Li, who had a Pseudo-Spiritual Root, through sheer dog-shit luck. Han Li's spiritual roots included every element except metal, making him suited to cultivating wood-attribute techniques.
Han Li was the protagonist of A Record of a Mortal's Journey to Immortality, a cultivation maniac.
Spiritual roots were complicated. Some people had only one spiritual root, known as a "heavenly spiritual root," and cultivated very quickly. Others had several spiritual roots that fused together to produce special roots, such as wind spiritual roots or thunder spiritual roots. The worst were several separate spiritual roots, known as "Pseudo-Spiritual Roots." They were still spiritual roots, but cultivation with them was painfully slow.
Of course, as cultivation progressed, advancing to higher realms required "uniting the five elements," which meant completing one's five elements spiritual root. How could the missing elements be supplied? One method was to seize Demon Cores of the corresponding attributes. The other was to refine magical treasures of the corresponding attributes into spiritual roots.
Heavenly spiritual roots made things easy at first and difficult later. Pseudo-Spiritual Roots made things difficult at first and easy later.
Many cultivators with Pseudo-Spiritual Roots failed in the early stages because they cultivated too slowly. Especially in the lower realms, where spiritual energy was thin, Pseudo-Spiritual Roots required enormous resources. No sect would spend those resources raising someone with Pseudo-Spiritual Roots. With the same resources, rather than nurture one such cultivator, they could nurture two with heavenly spiritual roots, or even three.
Forget possession. I don't even know who has spiritual roots. And the lower realms don't have methods for transplanting Demon Cores or artifact spiritual roots either. Mo Caihuan's thoughts were a tangled mess, and she could not help recalling what that money-grubbing cultivator had said: spiritual roots were the roots of spiritual energy.
The body was the soil. When spiritual energy took root within it, those roots became spiritual roots. As the body continually absorbed nutrients, it could nourish the spiritual roots within. Those roots would grow a Golden Core, bear a Nascent Soul, and evolve little by little until one finally comprehended the Great Dao.
It was just like a plant, developing and undergoing transformations as it grew.
Even without spiritual roots, if spiritual energy were abundant enough, the body might still absorb it. It just couldn't undergo those transformations. Unfortunately, spiritual energy is too thin in the lower realms for body tempering. As for body tempering, she had already been trying it. She had found quite a few Buddhist techniques, including the Diamond Art.
According to the original novel, the Diamond Art was one of the five commonplace Body Tempering techniques in the upper realms. By cultivating with abundant spiritual energy, even powerful mortals could withstand Nascent Soul cultivators head-on.
But spiritual energy was too thin in the lower realms. There was simply no way to succeed at body tempering.
Mo Caihuan had also tried substituting other kinds of energy for spiritual energy. Baleful energy, for instance, could be acquired by killing more people. Vast righteous energy could be acquired by reading more Confucian classics...
None of it had much effect. There was still too little spiritual energy in the lower realms. Baleful energy, righteous energy, demonic energy, and the like all required spiritual energy as their foundation. They were simply spiritual energy with different attributes.
"Why does cultivating immortality have to be so materialistic?" Mo Caihuan felt utterly helpless. Cultivation really was materialistic: if you had resources, you had resources; if you did not, you did not. Cultivation required a staggering quantity of resources.
There were no breakthroughs through sheer force of mind, only piles upon piles of resources.
With vast resources, even mortals could cultivate. Whether through possession or refining Demon Cores and spiritual artifacts, they could acquire spiritual roots. Then they could take pills to ripen their magical power and break through to higher realms. At that point, inner demons, heavenly tribulations, and the five declines of celestial beings would pose no problem.
Unfortunately, no one could possess that many resources, and Mo Caihuan did not even have a spiritual root.